ICCESS update: Robot Surgery Live at the Science Museum

Robot Surgery Live at the Science Museum

The celebrated Imperial surgeon Professor Lord Ara Darzi took a step back in time to the year 2000 to re-enact the UK’s first robot-assisted keyhole surgery operation on Friday 10 March at the Science Museum in London, as part of the museum’s current Robots exhibition

Using the UK’s first da Vinci surgical robot device (recently acquired by the Science Museum for its major new Medical Galleries, scheduled to open in 2019), Professor Darzi and his team demonstrated how he removed his patient’s gallbladder in that pioneering operation, controlling the surgical instruments remotely from a console on the other side of the operating theatre.

Professor Darzi gave a commentary to the capacity audience of 300 as he operated (though this time his ‘patient’ was a realistic simulator), while giant screens showed the procedure in high-res detail. After the procedure, Professor Darzi and ICCESS Director Professor Roger Kneebone explored current challenges and controversies around robotics in surgery before opening the discussion to the audience and a wider panel for a lively debate.

New Horizons conference

Dr Miranda Kronfli was an invited speaker at a conference held at the London Specialty School of Obstetrics and Gynaecology on 10 March. The conference, entitled New Horizons, focused on innovation in clinical practice and clinical education, and was attended by around 200 Obstetrics and Gynaecology trainee doctors.

Dr Kronfli’s talk outlined the novel way in which the Centre’s Sequential Simulation (SqS) approach facilitates learning and perspective sharing amongst multi-disciplinary groups within health organisations, explaining how our team is using SqS in the Sharing Approaches to Maternity Services project to map out best practice and challenges in the delivery of maternity services across North West London.

The talk was well received by the trainees, and raised issues around the variety of opportunities that medical simulation provides.

Visit to Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education

Centre Director Dr Fernando Bello visited the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education in Mexico during February to give a presentation entitled Visuo-haptic Environments in Medicine: Challenges and Opportunities.

Crossing Boundaries

Professor Roger Kneebone gave a talk at the New York Academy of Medicine entitled Crossing Boundaries on 4 April which was a great success. Prof Kneebone’s presented the idea of surgery being a site of performance and craftsmanship to an audience of clinicians, artists, humanities scholars and members of the general public.

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